The intentions to revive a spiritual legend of the Mountain Woman may have been promising, but the result is disappointing. It attempts to settle accounts with the same range of melodramatic themes of 20th century Japanese cinema, with topics derived from feudalism and its diversity of agrarian and social caste injustices, but it does so with a narrative that, to begin with, and I am sorry if I am wrong, It demonstrates inexperience in direction evident in the careless editing so that there are no gaps in the cohesion of the script of this film, and is also evidenced by technical clumsiness in filming (it is true that the photography is very good, the Hayachine mountain in fog) but the cameos are beginner's, with confusing scenes, or that seem like they were made for TV, like when Rin runs into the wild man who throws raw meat at him, I repeated it 3 times and I never understood if Rin is scared but moves forward and follows the shaggy guy, or there is perplexity or curiosity that could be a mixture of the girl's bravery, or, if she recognizes the barbarian guy because he is someone she has already seen or known; It is not clear why there is no close up to the expressions of her who takes shelter in the tree); but the worst is reflected in the clear ignorance - let's call it - of the state of canonical art on these topics - of a good part of the cult classic cinema of the last century (Tadashi Imai, Mizoguchi, Shinoda, Ozu or even Yoshida). I don't mean to imitate Kurosawa or any of the greats I mentioned, but absent from the footage is a constellation of details from the era to which it alludes, from the frames with a cherry or willow tree beaten by the wind to any shamisen or other instrument. With a velvety background of drama. The soundtrack begins to play when the saxophone creates an intonation that, frankly, I really liked because it matches the mood or indolence that Rin seems to have before night falls for the second time and he returns to the cave with the stranger. At no point does Rin transmit to me the cold of the mountain - since it is night - or the fear or uncertainty that should be inherent to a girl who has never left her village and gone into the mountains; It doesn't look as if she were out in the open with a stranger, and in fact, the sequence reaches the tone of absurdity because Rin enters the cave and lies down to sleep a few meters from the stranger, with all the confidence that a normal girl would only Maybe you would feel with your dad or grandfather. And the ritual ceremonies are defective, both that of the shaman with the group or council of eminent people in the cabin, after Rin left her village for being punished with slaps by Ihei, her father, as well as the protocol of the offering of Rin to end the village's calamities. Once Rin is found and the bearded, shaggy man or mountain walker is murdered, Rin is forcibly brought to the village and the village's influential people easily convince the ambitious Ihei to offer Rin's life to appease the famine and misfortunes that occurred there. The ending is extremely fantastic, it starts to rain when he was already on the pyre and he starts walking back to the mountain.
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